The dawn after his night

      So Jesse Jackson was buried Saturday, and more than two weeks have passed since the great civil rights leader left us. 
      Time for a word from our sponsor. 
      Yes, the paper has already flooded the zone on the subject — was it a lot for some readers? No doubt. But the Sun-Times is the voice of Chicago, and Jackson was the city's major figure over the past half century; and if you disagree with that, name another. Which is a version of the question I use to drive home his significance: who is his replacement? The immediate, obvious answer: nobody.

     Doubly ironic with the current war against DEI. Now, that we need someone like Jesse Jackson more than ever, we lose the only one we ever had.
    In our newspaper meeting before Friday's big ceremony, my first question was one of tone — we'd be live blogging, I said. What if Biden falls asleep? We need to note that. I was worried about my potential for injecting snarkiness into the proceedings. Cracking wise at a funeral.

     Though as it turned out, I never felt particularly snarky. I was moved. By the music. the stirring words, particularly Obama's. So much so I stopped taking notes. The enthusiasm of the participants. 

      Though snarkiness came in the fifth hour, when the fourth president to take the podium, the president of Colombia, was talking about his nation's biodiversity. I had no idea why he was there and, taking my cue to leave ahead of the crowd, realized that politics had pushed family aside — most of his kids had yet to speak — and not for the first time.
     Not that I said that, yesterday. I've gotten quite good at blunting my edge. One doesn't last 38 years — this month — on staff at a newspaper without the ability to read the room. This was supposed to be about Jackson. Not me.
     So in his obituary, I went light on certain trademark Jackson qualities that perhaps should have received more play. For instance? An exasperating aspect that David Axelrod captures beautifully in his excellent memoir, "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics." He was a key adviser to Harold Washington, and recounted the night Washington won re-election as mayor of Chicago in 1987:

     "That night, at a boisterous post-election reception, we were confronted by a logistical problem. Two inveterate camera hogs, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and boxing impresario Don King, were on hand and would almost certainly try to flank Washington at the lectern for the 'hero' shot in the morning papers. It wasn't the photo we wanted, as Harold worked to bring a diverse city together. So we decided to flood the stage with a multiracial crowd of supporters, who would provide the backdrop for Harold's acceptance speech. To ensure that Jackson and King were not in the picture, we would provide catnip by asking them to do out-of-town media interviews that would keep them busy almost right up to the moment Washington took to the stage.
     "It seemed like a good plan, but we underestimated the skills Jackson and King had in navigating their way to the limelight. Though the reverend and the impresario reached the stage after the backdrop crowd was in place, each worked his way to the lectern form opposite sides, like knives through butter. By the time Washington began speaking, they were, just as we feared, flanking him, nearly jostling the mayor's fiancee out of the way. When Washington finished his remarks, Reverend Jackson, who was planning a second race for president in 1988, grabbed the mayor's left arm to hoist it in the familiar victory salute. Yet Harold was a strong man, and his arm didn't budge, He kept it plastered to the lectern while he waved to the crowd with his other hand.
     "'I'll be damned if I was going to let that SOB lift my arm up,' Harold whispered as he left the stage. 'This isn't his night.'"

     That struggle is too perfect not to include in all this verbiage about the man. Although it really only underlines my belief that our good qualities and our flaws are often the same thing. Without superhuman drive and bottomless ambition, Jesse Jackson never shoots from divinity school to Martin Luther King's side in an eye blink. They're all of a piece. 

     This has been Jackson's night — his fortnight, actually. Jackson certainly deserved it. Watching tears stream down Jackson's cheeks during Obama's victory rally at Grant Park in 2008, Axelrod summed up the man in one sentence better than I did in 100.
     "He could be a shameless hustler and relentless self-promoter, but the reverend also was a trailblazer who had devoted his life to civil rights."   
     A giant, departing during a time of dwarves. Jackson had his failings. We all do, and there won't be 50 people at my funeral. But every time I point out one of Jackson's flaws, I remember that nowadays we have leaders who are all flaws.